The Kremlin's Candidate

by Jason Matthews

  She thought back to her recruitment at the Metropol in Moscow, and wondered what had become of the stunning Russian girl who had wet her chin between her thighs so long ago. Certainly she was not a three-star admiral now. That sexy evening had started the whole thing: Audrey began spying as a way to boost her career, specifically to show the son of a bitch she called daddy that she could match, no surpass, his own career in the navy. As the stripes on her sleeve multiplied, Audrey was confirmed in her belief that she had made the right decision regarding the Russians, despite the initial circumstances. Now she was in danger. Her orderly mind contemplated the odds, and she felt no fear, confident in her own intellect and in Anton’s skill.

  Audrey was ready to leave the navy, and if she became DCIA it would mean two or three or four more years of bureaucratic torpor, spectacular gains for Moscow, the collapse of CIA, and continued annuity payments from the Kremlin, after which Audrey Rowland would disappear, and retire to a beach somewhere with hot and cold running chocito in sarongs and braided hair. She wouldn’t have to be alone anymore.

  But first she had to survive this imminent threat to her liberty, and trust that SUSAN was at this moment speaking to Anton, who in turn was alerting security at Putin’s compound, and that both the CIA officer and his confounded mole would be arrested and eliminated so her secret would remain safe forever.

  ARGENTINE CHORIPANES

  Split and toast small rolls on a griddle until brown. Cut chorizo in half, then in half lengthwise, and grill until caramelized and charred on both sides. Grill sliced white onions until caramelized and finish with a splash of balsamic vinegar. Put chorizo and onions on toasted rolls and slather with chimichurri sauce. (Process shredded carrots, parsley, vinegar, red pepper flakes, garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper in a blender into a thick sauce.)

  35

  Gall, Not Cheek

  SUSAN’s tardy relay of MAGNIT’s urgent warning about the CIA officer who would attempt to penetrate the president’s swanky party to contact the mole known as CHALICE was received in the Center, but was further delayed by the laborious special handling required of all incoming messages from illegals. It finally was forwarded from Yasenevo to the communications unit at Cape Idokopas, where it was read by Gorelikov with a mixture of alarm and triumph. He made a hurried inquiry with the security office: they still had time; the new art-restoration shift from Poland was arriving the next morning. He immediately convened an emergency executive meeting in the secure room of the commo shack with General Egorova of the SVR, Bortnikov of the FSB, and Patrushev of the Security Council.

  “The szloba, the gall of these Americans, attempting this at the president’s compound,” said Bortnikov behind his blue halo. “I could understand it in Moscow, business as usual, but this is too much.”

  Patrushev had no time for games. His own yellow halo of deceit and cruelty shimmered in the small gray room. He pointed his Cossack’s nose at Gorelikov. “Gall, not cheek. What is so complicated?” he said. “When the American arrives with the Polish contingent, it will be a simple matter to arrest him immediately. Let our colleagues here”—he nodded to Dominika and Bortnikov—“arrange a vigorous interrogation, determine the identity of this CHALICE, and settle the matter. The American and his mole can share a cell in the Black Dolphin, in Orenburg.”

  Gorelikov had his courtier’s face on, so as not to offend. “I agree with you wholeheartedly, but if you would please indulge me for a moment.” He shot his French shirtsleeves absentmindedly, revealing magnificent cuff links of brushed silver and red coral. “I propose, for your consideration, a discreet alternative to immediate arrest and interrogation, as logical and proper a course of action as it might be. I posit that if we instead let the American roam freely during the three days of the president’s reception, under constant and strict surveillance, he is likely to attempt contact and unknowingly lead us directly to the individual we seek, the mole CHALICE.”

  Bortnikov, whose FSB surveillance teams were prodigious, liked the idea. More credit for him and his agency if he could bag both the case officer and the mole. Dominika kept her face impassive, but internally she knew this diabolical ambush tactic could blow her out of the water in forty-eight hours. And she knew something else. It would be Nate Nash who would be coming from Washington; she knew him, and she was certain of it. As good as he was on the street, Nate could be kept under strict control by static surveillance following his every move around the presidential compound through long lenses that would be impossible to spot. If he made a beeline toward her, convinced that he was black, the game would be over.

  Something didn’t make sense. How had MAGNIT learned of Nate’s mission? And where had the cryptonym CHALICE sprung from? She guessed the answer, but could not believe it. She had been doing this long enough, and knew Benford well enough, to come to the unspeakable conclusion that this was what the Americans called a barium enema, designed to flush out MAGNIT by using Nate as primanka, an expendable lure, dangling bait. A desperate gambit, sacrificing him.

  How ironic it would be if Nate unwittingly was the engine of her compromise? Just about as ironic as what Dominika knew she had to do now. Gently, she thought, stay objective and kill this idea without offending Gorelikov or alerting the other two wet-muzzled wolves at the table.

  She sat up straight, folded her elegant hands on the table in front of her, and looked them all in the eyes. “It is an inspired plan,” she said. “But as you all realize, the enemy of tradecraft is unnecessary complication. If something can go wrong on the street, it invariably will. You all know this. I do not wish to give the impression of negativity, but the list of potential pitfalls is significant.”

  Dominika took a breath. “CIA case officers trained in denied-area operations are resourceful. This man coming tomorrow could elude our coverage and foil our plans. He could use disguises. He could distract our surveillance units while an unknown second confederate accomplishes their mission. He could have some infernal technical device—we all know how the Americans rely on their little black boxes—that could allow him to make contact with CHALICE under our noses, without ever approaching him. And worst of all, the CIA officer could detect coverage, abort his mission, and escape in the stealth aircraft MAGNIT reported was part of the plan, leaving us looking like fools, and worse off than before. Admittedly, gentlemen, these are all remote possibilities, but they are possibilities. Can we afford to risk coming up empty-handed?”

  That is why I’m trying to persuade you tarakany you cockroaches, to arrest the man I love with all my heart, and allow me to be present when you beat him, and watch him thrown in prison to rot until he dies or is broken and ruined, because there’s nothing else I can do.

  To the annoyance of Gorelikov and Bortnikov, Patrushev nodded. “I agree with Egorova,” he said. “Immediate arrest and interrogation. That is the only way to mitigate the risk. Are we all agreed? Or should we consult with the president?” No one wanted that—not in Putin’s current frame of mind—so it was agreed: the CIA officer would be arrested immediately. Dominika breathed a sigh of relief as her heart went cold and died.

  * * *

  * * *

  Nate and Agnes flew on LOT, the Polish airline, from Warsaw to Bucharest, and then to Odessa. Three hungover apprentice art-restoration students from Warsaw were on the same flight. Bored officials at Customs and Immigration stamped Nate’s alias Polish passport without looking at it. Another hour flight on a Ukraine International Embraer 170 had them standing at the front portico of Gelendzhik Airport, waiting for the van that ferried staff and workers to Cape Idokopas. The soft subtropical breeze stirred Agnes’s skirt, and they smelled the salt air from the sea. Nate wore wire-rimmed glasses, jeans, and a T-shirt with “Warszawa” in letters across his chest, and they both carried small duffels. A surly Russian driver appeared in a wheezing UAZ minivan, and took them all careering down the M4 to Svetly, where they turned off the highway and got onto a meandering two-lane blacktop that wound its way dow
nhill through pine-forested valleys scarred by limestone cliffs, steeply down toward the water past paltry villages at lonely crossroads—Divnomorskoye, Dzhankhot, Praskoveevka—and finally through the compound gate with a militsiya car on the side of the road, and more slowly now, past guardhouses and military jeeps parked in the trees, to stop at the front steps of a large dormitory-type building amid the pines. In the distance, the roof of the massive main palace loomed above the treetops. Agnes was calm and collected, Nate marveled; she was cooler than he was.

  They lined up in front of a table to register, surrender their passports, and received security badges on lanyards for access to the compound and the work sites inside the mansion. A militiaman told a Polish student to put out his cigarette, and the young man pretended not to understand, blowing smoke in his general direction. The militiaman stepped toward the student to knock the cigarette and some teeth out of his mouth, but the subaltern barked at him in Russian to step back and “take his position.” Nate’s scalp moved as he saw other militiamen standing attentively, edging in, and looking specifically at him. Nate made an instant calculation about knocking a guard over and dashing for a door or window. But where would he go? There were hundreds of protective militia and Special Forces troops, plus two hundred SBP (Presidential Security Service) agents on the seventy-four-hectare compound. And God knew where Dominika was. He couldn’t sprint for her dacha and hide under her bed.

  The Russians’ efficiency was chilling. How had his cover been undermined so quickly? Did this mean there was another mole inside Langley who knew about his mission? That could only mean Forsyth, Westfall, or that cue-ball maniac from maritime branch. Impossible. There was nothing that the Russians could have picked up from his alias documents, nothing about his Polish Art Academy cover story. Was it possible he was recognized from his first tour in Moscow? Some misstep at Customs in Odessa? No, not even the FSB were that good. Whatever the reason, he understood what was going to happen.

  He leaned close to Agnes and whispered. “Something’s wrong, I think I’m blown. Stay away from me and stick with the students.”

  Agnes didn’t budge, didn’t blink; she was every inch the top pro. “I’ll get clear and get you out if there’s any trouble,” she said. She looked at him with blazing eyes.

  Nate snarled at her out of the side of his mouth while stepping away from her. “You’ll do no such thing. We rehearsed this. You lie low and work with the restoration team for two weeks, then fly home. Stay away from DIVA and her dacha, and stay off the beach. She knows enough to send MAGNIT’s name out in the boat. Understand?”

  Agnes nodded. “I’ll follow your orders, but there’s one more thing,” she said. “I love you.” Nate looked at her for a long beat, trying to say it with his eyes. That white forelock, Jesus. He turned away.

  The subaltern stood up, the signal. It was time. As the surprised students looked on sullenly, two militiamen stepped behind Nate and grabbed him tightly above the elbows, spun him around, and walked him through a door at the end of the dormitory lobby. He didn’t resist, husbanding his strength. Agnes didn’t look at him, and the last thing he saw as he was pushed through the door was that no one had seized her. Thank Christ. Nate was led down a manicured gravel path through a dense stand of pines, their fresh scent competing with the salt air. Nate thought he could see glimpses of water through gaps in the trees, but the militiamen yanked him straight whenever he looked to the side. At the end of the path, quite alone, deep in the forest, stood an ornate Russian log cottage with decorative fringe tracing the steep gables, a pair of casement windows with rustic diagonal muntins and a polished wooden door with wrought-iron hinge straps and a grated speakeasy. Fucking Hansel and Gretel. The guards opened the door and pushed him into a deep armchair upholstered in dark-green fabric. Nate looked around the spartan living room with a single couch and two end tables. A framed picture of Lenin hung on the wall in front of Nate, the unsmiling portrait of him while in exile, around age fifty, with the piercing stare, the goatee, the straight mouth without a trace of mirth or mercy.

  The bare logs on the walls and along the pitched ceiling were light-colored and polished, their gleam lighting up the room in the afternoon light. This was a secluded guesthouse, or perhaps the personal quarters of some caretaker. The two militiamen stood on either side of the armchair and pushed him back down into the chair when he tried to get up, apologetically saying toileta. He wanted to look around the cabin for escape points, and to test the degree of free movement allowed him, but for now, no dice. Nate knew this was going to be hard or easy, a sophisticated interrogation or a basic police-level interview. He expected the latter, for starters. A lot was going to depend on his attitude, the mood and skill of the interrogators, what exactly they wanted to know, and the urgency of their inquiries. He planned on sassing them, pissing them off, and holding out for as long as possible.

  Early in training, Nate had attended classes in interrogation—resisting it, not inflicting it. The instructor, an Argentine operator—with a perpetually flicking eyelid and improbably named Ramón Lustbader (named by his mother after silent-screen star Ramón Novarro) with an attitude worse than Gable’s—had told the class that the bottom line was that everyone eventually gave it up; it was just a matter of how long you put up with the pain or drugs. Classically, the goal was to hold out forty-eight hours, an artificial period ostensibly long enough for a blown asset or a compromised network of assets to exfiltrate, but that was largely outdated film noir, Cold War theatrics.

  In actuality, Ramón said, it was the pain of physical punishment—and the ancillary techniques of sleep deprivation, starvation, and extremes of hot or cold—that broke prisoners. The mysterious and feared psychotropic drugs such as ethanol, sodium thiopental, amobarbital, and scopolamine that reportedly could compel prisoners to talk, and that could, after prolonged use, plunge the human brain to the cognitive level of one of the lesser apes, in reality did not compel subjects to begin blurting the truth. Rather, these drugs unlocked memories, reduced inhibitions, and heightened suggestive responses that could, in the hands of a skilled interrogator, prompt the blurting of desired information. Common sleeping gas at the dentist, nitrous oxide, had the same effect.

  Lustbader’s eyelid pulsed as he lectured the class. “If you focus on a thought or person, or on an external object, really obsessively focus, the mind can effectively counteract the effects of the interrogation drugs that coincidentally quickly spike in effectiveness, then dissipate dramatically. Coming out of it feels like rising to the surface after a deep dive. The euphoria at that stage, the rush back to the light, is the danger period where the ebullient subject is most likely to be susceptible to elicitation.” He looked at the trainees who were dreaming of future glories in the field, or thinking about lunch. “Unless they want to turn you into a gibbon monkey—though I suspect some of you in this class are already halfway there—they cannot top you off with more drugs for another twelve hours, without risking harm.”

  None of the students ever dreamed they would in the course of their careers have to recall Ramón’s words.

  * * *

  * * *

  When SUSAN sent the encrypted flash message detailing MAGNIT’s verbal report about a CIA case officer infiltrating the compound to contact an American-handled mole, code-named CHALICE—a mole who somehow knew the closely held identity of Admiral Audrey Rowland—Gorelikov was amazed. The tenacity of the Americans to recruit sources deep inside the corridors of the Federation never seemed to abate. Unmasking this CHALICE was not going to be easy. As much as Gorelikov had run MAGNIT meticulously as his own asset recently, there were an infinite number of potential leaks and points of entry into the case: a dozen GRU handlers from the early years, twice as many supervisors, records clerks, the Security Council staff, and technical experts evaluating MAGNIT’s voluminous reporting. But none of these people was on the VIP guest list for the Cape Idokopas weekend gala. The two hundred guests were service chiefs, ministers,
and the slobbering siloviki around the president. But who knew about MAGNIT? Bortnikov of FSB, that idiot from the GRU, the president. But that is not how secrets are lost: mistresses hear things, people get drunk and brag at a party, the president himself might comment on MAGNIT to an old friend from the Petersburg years, and the bird is out of the cage, impossible to trace back to the source.

  There was one thing: Egorova did not know MAGNIT’s name, which provisionally exonerated her and meant that Gorelikov could depend on her to assist in the counterintelligence investigation, but there was no time to fiddle with suspects and interviews. CHALICE had to be identified and wrapped up within the next five days. Word from the Washington rezidentura was that the derogatory stories had been loudly trumpeted by a US press corps with a taste for political calamity: Senator Feigenbaum and Ambassador Vano were out of the running for DCIA, and VADM Rowland would begin congressional confirmation hearings immediately.

  Gorelikov contemplated the audacity of the Americans to send an operations officer into Russia, to the president’s compound, to brazenly meet an agent to scoop up MAGNIT’s true name. The bastard case officer being held in the Gorki cottage in the woods was the key: the identity of CHALICE had to be ripped from his throat. Gorelikov had quickly assembled three experts in interrogation methods: a doctor from Moscow State University who specialized in psychotropic drugs; a psychologist from the Serbsky State Scientific Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry; and a behavioral scientist from Section 12 of Line S in SVR, the illegals directorate. Meanwhile, the honored party guests were arriving by limousine, shuttle bus, or personal helicopter, each according to their place on the food chain. And one of them was CHALICE. Gorelikov frantically summoned Egorova, and briefed her on the situation, and together they hurried through the woods to the cottage. Egorova was smart and capable. Gorelikov saw the color drain from her face as she instantly realized the imminent danger to MAGNIT.